My friend Mike seems to know a thing or two about astrology. He’s not a New Age freak or anything, just a casual sort of weekend occultist. He told me there was a hardcore Mercury Retrogrades in December, and if I had any hopes for being productive I should just ditch them right now and save everyone a lot of trouble.

“What the fuck’s a Mercury Retrograde?” I asked him. “Sounds like something that happens to your prostate if you don’t jerk off enough, haw haw haw haw.”

Mike was not amused. He disdainfully informed me that a Mercury Retrograde is where the planet Mercury, as viewed from Earth, appears to “go retrograde,” or travel backward in its orbit. It does this to return all the shitty gifts its annoying Republ ican relatives Saturn and Venus bought it during the compulsory Holiday Conjunction at Alpha Centauri. Ha ha ha.

This particular Mercury Retrograde started on December 7 and lasted through the 27th. It doesn’t happen the same time every year or anything, it just sort of jumps around randomly, like Easter.

Mike informs me that the planet Mercury has a profound affect over things that have to do with the mind. You know, intellectual stuff. Culture. He cautioned me not to write or travel during this period. Every possible connection — physical, spirit ual, and intellectual — is missed during a Mercury Retrograde. During this period, signing contracts = bad. Making major purchases = unbelievably bad.

This all started to make sense to me when Mike reminded me that a mutual acquaintance bought her computer during the last Mercury Retrograde, and the hard drive had to be replaced five times. Another guy we know bought a new car a few MercRet’s ago, a nd shortly thereafter the engine exploded, spontaneously turning the car into some sort of MOMA exhibit.

Mercury Retrograde is (as Mike said in his characteristically soothing tone) the universe’s way of slowing down, letting the soil of existence lie fallow for a while so it can grow new crops, yada yada. It’s a time when you’re supposed to reflect upon your deeds and misdeeds, clean out the top drawer of your mental and spiritual desk, ream out your ears with cotton swabs, etc. etc. Mercury Retrogrades are periods of frustrated creativity and harpooned ambitions.

Let’s just say it’s the cosmos’s way of nailing our collective dicks to the floor for a while.

Creativity being key to the existence of a Necrophilia Guy, I took Mike’s warning to heart, and spent a very productive December sitting around the house drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and teaching myself to belch harmony on the Green Acres theme song. On deadline on four different stories, none of them involving necrophilia or astrology, I was seized with this passionate desire to clean my apartment — for the first time in recent memory. Not exactly a daily occurrence at Necrophilia Guy Headquarters.

The general public tends to have a rather romantic view of professional writers. I can understand that — it’s plenty romantic (to me, at least) to write novels about cheerleaders boinking and bleach-blonde porno queens blowing well-hung sailors. Shi t, talk about romantic. Lord Byron is probably turning green. If he ain’t already green.

But even the most ill-informed civilian can figure out that no publisher (that I’m aware of) pays hard cold cash for belching the Green Acres theme song, and damn few write checks to me for cleaning my apartment. So, for me, December’s been sort of an unasked-for vacation to Flakeville. Coincidence? I think not!

But that’s not the point. During a Mercury Retrograde, Mike tells me, you shouldn’t even think about doing anything creative. Rather, you should work on cleaning your mental file cabinet, flushing out your spiritual carburetor, enriching the soil of your life so you can grow new cantaloupes. Or something like that.

After I was done with my harmony-belching, I took Mike’s advice and completely alienated my family by giving them human skulls for Christmas. The kids loved it, but Mom was a little less impressed. She was just pissed because she got the one with the eyebrows still on.

But all in all, I felt pretty pleased with myself by the time Mercury, like the rest of us, started going the right direction.

*

One thing that the Mercury Retrograde did NOT interfere with was the imperturbably annoying nature of Christmas. One day in December, I turned on the classical music station — hoping for some Bach, Fauré, Chopin, maybe a little Beethoven — on ly to be subjected to a nauseatingly cheerful rendition of “Deck the Halls.”

“Awright,” I muttered to myself, “Somebody’s gonna get whacked for this.”

Deprived of even the simple pleasure of classical music radio, I was forced to reflect on the triumphs and tragedies of 1997. So I came up with my

Ten Oh-So-Gothic Resolutions for the Fucking New Year

Start letter writing campaign to have “Lucretia, My Reflection” named new National Anthem.

Create postmodern sculpture out of the bones of the Christmas turkey.

Scour family history for signs of madness.

Move forward with plan for assassination of Marilyn Manson as soon as The Jackal gets paroled.

Get my girlfriend to videotape me while I lie on a bed covered with giblets and recite the lyrics to “Siamese Twins.”

Let’s face it: the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’. Mercury’s done retrograding and we can now return to our normally shitty lives. So please join me in yanking the spiritual panties out of the crack in our collective ass: a brave new world await s, and its name is ninety-eight. Let’s make it beg for mercy.

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Posted by Thomas Roche
on Monday, October 10th, 2005. Filed under Uncategorized.
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